cxch@musica.mcgill.ca (Barbara Graves)
Barbara Graves (cxch@musica.mcgill.ca)
Thu, 2 Nov 1995 19:28:56 -0500
The following is by way of introduction to the xmca discussion:
My undergraduate training was in Literary Studies in French and
English, and my graduate formation has been in Educational Psychology. I
have extensive experience both as a classroom English teacher and as an
educational researcher.
My dissertation research, "A cognitive perspective on expertise in
literary understanding, investigated the role of extensive literary
knowledge and practice in literary reading." This study addressed two
issues identified in critical theories of literature, namely, the
instability of the text and the role of the reader in literary
communication. It is important to mention that the goal of expertise
research is not to valorize the role of experts and make expert performance
prescriptive for general readers. Rather, it is a methodological strategy
which assumes that by examining expert performance with many literary texts
and in many different contexts we can develop a broad base of performance
from which to infer aspects of the system of literary practice.
As a graduate student at McGill I had the good fortune to be involved
in a large number of research projects of an interdisciplinary nature
pertaining to 1) discourse processing in a first and second language; 2)
biliteracy and school success of minority language children; 3) the role of
language in the construction of mathematical knowledge; 4) text processing
and multimedia.
Recently I have been involved in classroom-based research in conjunction
with Vicki Zack, who as a teacher-researcher, explores the implications of
Vygotskian ideas in her inquiry-based mathematics classroom.
I have both enjoyed and benefitted from the discussions on the x-family
server and look forward to re-establishing the connection.
Sincerely,
Barbara Graves Email:
CXCH@musica.mcgill.ca
Laboratory of Applied Cognitive Science Off: (514) 398-4256
Department of Educational Psychology Fax: (514) 457-6399
McGill University (by appointment)